


there's no room to write it all

by LuckyDiceKirby



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: M/M, Post-Thor: Ragnarok (2017), awkward mind melds with your shitty brother for fun and profit, terrible memory road trip 2k17
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-03
Updated: 2017-12-03
Packaged: 2019-02-09 22:35:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12898266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LuckyDiceKirby/pseuds/LuckyDiceKirby
Summary: Sinking into Thor’s mind is an odd sensation. The inside of the Valkyrie’s head was sharp, and something close to familiar. Soaked in anguish and betrayal, layers and layers of memories buried in deep corners, discarded in the vain hope that they will be forgotten.Stepping into Thor’s head is like stepping into a freshly drawn bath that is yet too warm. Familiar, and yet still scalding. Loki knows in his bones that he will get used to it.





	there's no room to write it all

**Author's Note:**

> i saw ragnarok four (4) times and this is the result

Loki is accustomed to many modes of travel--he knows the ways of the Bifrost, the secret paths that once lurked beneath Asgard’s surface, allowing him to move unseen by Heimdall’s watchful eyes, the dark grooves in Yggdrasil’s roots. He has been to every shadowed corner of the Nine Realms, moving as a man or a horse or a snake.

Not once, however, has he traveled with an entire nation in tow. It does slow things down.

Thor is making a play of patience--he must, of course, with the entirety of Asgard looking on at his every mood--but Loki is losing his own. He waited so long, to see Odin dead. Of course he had known that Odin would eventually break out of the spell that kept him locked on Midgard. And then he would return to Asgard, perhaps with loyal Thor at his back, ready to tear the throne away from Loki’s traitorous hands--

And who would have blamed Loki, then, for killing him?

Well, everyone, of course. But a death in battle was how Odin had always meant to go out. Loki had not expected--well. He has never been a seer. 

Now that Odin is dead, and Asgard the place is destroyed, and Thor will look him in the eyes without raising the hammer that he no longer has, Loki is at a loss. He has his plans, of course; the Tesseract tucked safely away for a rainy day. Loki is a master of collecting tools, and allowing their uses to come to him in the right moment. But for now he is waiting, and Loki is only any good at waiting the way that a cat waits: tail twitching, with a target in mind to strike. 

He cannot wait as a hound does, loyal and sure that its master will one day return, that soon enough there will be a purpose, a reason for its existence. The way that Thor seems to be waiting.

So Loki amuses himself. He endeavors to steal a lock of the Valkyrie’s hair, and has his face nearly put through the window of the ship for his trouble. He convinces the Hulk, through a series of intermediaries and from a safe distance, that various former courtiers wish to train with him, and enjoys the ensuing confusion and violence immensely. He slips into Thor’s room and drinks him dry of the strange liquor the ship came stocked with, tossing the stopper of the bottle up and down in his hand.

When Thor retires, he finds Loki like that, sprawled against the wall. He’s put aside the stopper in favor of some enlightening reading material.

“Is that one of Korg’s pamphlets?” Thor asks. He seems unconcerned with Loki’s presence. Loki has been watching carefully, to see if Thor’s better judgment will win out, if his guard will go back up: but no. He appears convinced that Loki truly does mean to stay this time, and that his knives will stay firmly pointed away from Thor’s back.

Who knows. Perhaps he’s even right. Loki, of all people, certainly isn’t sure. 

“It is,” Loki says. “You know, the man may be quite the idiot, but he certainly has a skill for rhetoric. You should make a note of that. It may prove useful.”

“What need do I have for rhetoric? We’re on a ship, hurtling through the empty reaches of space. I prefer not to shout into the void when I can avoid it.” Thor has come to stand beside Loki, looking critically at the empty bottles beside him. “I was planning on drinking some of that, you know.”

“What precisely are you planning to say, when we reach Midgard and request refuge? ‘Hello, it’s me, Thor, and a thousand of my closest friends? Not to mention a man who tried to take over one of your piddling cities a few years hence?’ I’m sure that will go over quite well.”

“Well, I certainly won’t be letting you write the speech.” He settles down beside Loki, tips his head back against the cool metal of the walls. His shoulders slump, his brow creases, his face draws tight. He lets himself look tired in front of Loki. What an honor. “Midgard is a long while away. I have other concerns, as of late.”

“Ah, yes,” Loki says. “Ruling not as you expected it? Not the leisurely stroll you imagined as a boy?”

Thor shoots Loki a look. He sat, wisely, with Loki on his good side, within his line of sight. “It has been a long time since I expected ruling to be easy,” he says gravely. And then he sighs. “I did hope there would be slightly less paperwork, however.”

“Ever hopeful,” Loki agrees. He closes his eyes.

“Alright, Loki,” Thor says, long-suffering. “Out with it. What troubles you, these past few weeks?”

“Me?” Loki asks. “I haven’t a care in the world.” 

“Valkyrie tells me you replaced her entire stash of drink with sword oil. She’s been stomping around, trying to find another sorcerer to fix it. I told her she just ought to ask you, but apparently no matter where she looks, you are nowhere to be found, even when she has it on good authority you were there just a moment ago. Even when other people in the room can see you quite clearly.”

Loki cannot help but smile. Ah, the look on her face when she’d spit it out. “Oh, that could have been anyone. There are quite a few restless children running about the ship.”

“So you admit that you are acting like a child,” Thor says. At that, Loki stands, only a touch unsteady on his feet. Most of the alcohol had run its course while he was reading. The heat in his veins now is of a different sort. If there is one thing he is not, it is a _child_.

“Ah, yes,” he says. “Your little brother Loki, ever in need of your help. What is your wise counsel, then, dear brother? Shall I find some way to make myself _useful_ on this ship?”

“That would be helpful, yes,” Thor says. He levers himself up.

In truth, living under Thor’s eye, in a way Loki has not done since they were children--since before he knew his own life to be built on falsehoods--scares Loki in a way he is unused to. Life on this ship holds the same simple seduction that his life on Asgard once did--a placid lie, concealing Loki knows not what. This peace cannot last forever. He and Thor are not meant to coexist without an enemy greater than themselves to fight. Soon enough they will be at odds again, and it will hurt all the more if Loki lets himself grow complacent. More than anything, he is in danger of finding his sea legs.

“I am sorry if I am not of enough _use_ ,” Loki spits. “I am sure it must have stung, when you thought I died there on Svartalfheim. You needed my help so desperately then, to avenge mother’s death. And you need it now, to hold onto this kingdom of yours.”

Thor draws back, his brow drawn. “You think--I told you, Loki,” Thor says. “I grieved for you.”

Loki snorts. “I am sure you did,” he says. “You grieved for the brother you lost so long ago. A pale figment who never truly existed. And how long have you been grieving for a fiction?”

The look Thor is giving him puts Loki in mind of a storm brewing. Thor didn’t used to look at him like that: there was no time for any storm to brew. They simply happened, sudden and devastating, Thor roaring as he brought Mjolnir down. To think, that Thor might finally be growing up after all. “I grieved for you, Loki. I grieved for the brother I knew as a child, yes, but I also grieved for the man you are now.”

“And what sort of man is that?”

“Oh, many things.” Thor ticks them off on his fingers. “Asinine, and fickle, and infuriating. Apparently not quite as good a playwright, as I might have thought. But also brilliant, and insightful, and far more determined to get the things that you want than anyone else I have ever met, except for perhaps myself.”

Loki narrows his eyes. “High praise, from the King of Asgard.”

Thor makes a frustrated noise. “You think yourself so wise, Loki, and perhaps in some ways you are, but why will you never _listen_ to me?”

In some ways. High praise indeed. “Well, to be honest, you usually don’t have much interesting to say.” Loki tilts his head to the side. Usually the causes of Thor’s frustrations are obvious. This one is a bit more like an knot. Loki, as ever, aches to unravel it. “Why is this so important, brother?”

“I am merely trying to impress upon you the gravity of your actions.”

“I see,” Loki says. And he does. “You think that if I know that my ‘death’ made you, what, cry yourself to sleep every night, then I oh so kindly won’t do it again. Really, Thor? Childish, even for you.”

“Do you have a better plan?”

Loki mimics Thor and lists them off on his fingers. “Hold me in chains,” he says, “obviously. Trick me into believing that staying with you is in my best interest. Promise me riches beyond my wildest imaginations, if I aid Asgard in its resettlement. Threaten me with death if I don’t.”

Thor raises an eyebrow at him. “Do you not think staying with Asgard is in your best interest?”

Loki’s interests are so scattered, so various and wide ranging, that it would be impossible to satisfy all of them. Satisfying some of them, even now, is a momentous task. Loki had always thought that things would be simpler, once Odin was dead. Enough that he had toyed with the idea of killing the old man himself. And yet there was always something to stop him: first there was Frigga, and then there was Thor--and beyond that, perhaps, perhaps, there was Loki himself. 

Staying with Asgard--staying with Thor--there is no particular reason that he shouldn’t. Which isn’t, of course, a good enough reason to do it. Loki has lived a long time without a home. He is used to the feeling. He knows what it is to hang untethered; he knows what it is to fall.

Thor does not know any of those things. He will surely stumble in the learning of them. Loki should be there to see that. He hasn’t yet decided whether he is here to aid Thor, or to ensure his downfall. He is never sure. 

Loki spreads his arms out. “Where else have I to go?”

Thor rolls his one remaining eye. “You are Loki Odinson. When there is not another obvious path, you make one.”

Well, Loki can only concede the point. He inclines his head. “Now,” he says. “Let’s return to the subject of your paralyzing grief. Was it very dramatic? Did you rend the skies in half in your ardor? Did you indulge in any quaint Midgardian mourning customs? I hear there’s a delightful one involving ice cream and saccharine moving pictures.”

“If I tell you,” Thor asks, “will you believe me?”

“It is not a matter of _deception_ , of course. It never is, with you. But your perspective is often lacking.”

“I see,” Thor says. “You think I do not know my own mind.”

A mind is an almost impossible thing to know. It is a pit of vipers at the bottom of a deep well, one that hides secrets even from its owner. Even Thor, who thinks himself so simple and straightforward, can of course never know his own mind. And so Loki shakes his head. Smiles at Thor in the way that he knows will cut deepest. “The greatest trick I have ever pulled, Thor, is convincing you that you love me,” Loki tells him. “Don’t look at me like that. Aren’t you the one who is always harping on about _truth_? This is the truth, then. The love you think you hold for me is merely a lie. A trick, sowed by Odin, come to fruit borne by my own hand. It would be kinder to let you go, don’t you think? Lucky for me that I am not kind.”

“You are not,” Thor agrees, and he reaches out to grab Loki’s wrist, lightning quick, when he tries to turn away. “You are not kind, and you are not honorable, and you are my _brother_ , Loki, you are my last family left in this world. Why do you want me to hate you? What good will that bring either of us?”

If only it were that simple. If only anything were as simple as his brother wished. Loki shakes off Thor’s hand, and Thor, of course, only steps closer to him, blocking his path.

While Loki contemplates the various forms he could take to get out of this room, Thor speaks again. “If you will not believe me, then I will have to show you.”

“Ah, yes,” Loki says. “What will it be, then? Bribery? Gifts? A position pushing papers in your rebuilt empire?”

“If you wish to know my mind, then open it up and take a look,” Thor says. “Valkyrie told me you made your way into her memories by force. Well, there’s no need to force your way into my mind. You are welcome to it.”

Loki, without thinking about it, takes a step back. Another. He puts half the room between himself and Thor. “You’re a fool,” he says. “You would leave yourself open to attack so easily? Do you have any idea what I might do, given free reign of your mind? Memories are not stone. They can be molded by a skilled enough sorceror. Sometimes you don’t even need sorcery at all. Merely a silver tongue.” 

“I suppose I’ll just have to trust you, then,” Thor says easily. He shrugs. “Also, if I start talking oddly, Valkyrie promised to smash your head in.”

Loki smiles thinly. At least someone aboard this craft has any sense at all. 

“Well,” he says. He shakes himself. “I would be a fool myself to let an opportunity like this slip from my grasp.”

And Thor, infuriatingly, grins.

-

Thor chooses a corner of his quarters to sit in, legs crossed easily before him, hands in his lap. Loki sits stiffly beside him, unable to shake the tension creeping into his shoulders.

Thor’s solitary eye is closed. Waiting. Loki has performed this particular trick without resistance many times; a sleeping mind is the easiest sort to enter, after all, though often enough it is less than a joy to spend time in another’s dreams. But to have someone surrender like this is--

It’s unnatural. It makes Loki’s skin crawl. It makes him want to hit his brother upside the head until he learns to have a _care_ , for once in his damned life.

Instead he reaches out and presses two fingers to Thor’s temple. 

Sinking into Thor’s mind is an odd sensation. The inside of the Valkyrie’s head was sharp, and something close to familiar. Soaked in anguish and betrayal, layers and layers of memories buried in deep corners, discarded in the vain hope that they will be forgotten.

Stepping into Thor’s head is like stepping into a freshly drawn bath that is yet too warm. Familiar, and yet still scalding. Loki knows in his bones that he will get used to it. 

Valkyrie’s memories were dark, shrouded things. Thor’s are like cloth spun from gold: fuzzy and shining at the edges. 

The worst memories are always the easiest to find. They have teeth. They bite down and are loathe to let go. Many a sorcerer less skilled than Loki have fallen prey to them, have been devoured in their effort to find secrets in another’s mind. 

Loki can feel the yawning grief sucking at his heels. He resists it. Thor, crying over his own body--Loki has seen that before.

While he’s here, he might as well have a look around.

Thor’s head is straightforward. Thor, Thor, steady Thor, who does not know what it is to live like the throw of a die, whose thoughts are laid out in neat rows for Loki to stick his nose into. And so many of them have to do with Loki. He pushes past Svartalfheim, past the winds and the dust. Thor’s thoughts are very linear. It is easy enough to simply _push_ , to walk back and back.

He finds the Bifrost, first. He stands inside Thor’s skin as he brings Mjolnir down upon the Bifrost: once, twice, again and again as it cracks beneath him. Hears himself shout from behind him, ignores it--because of course, Thor is thinking only of Jane, of the Midgard he will never see again--and then abruptly they are falling, and Odin catches them, and Thor is thinking only of Loki, hanging in the balance.

It’s the same story Loki told back on Sakaar. It’s odd, to watch it through Thor’s eyes, to feel it in his throat as he yells after Loki. Loki watches himself fall, feels the way that Thor’s fingers twitch. The desire to reach for his brother. And Thor does reach out, and Loki reaches out with him: both of them trying to catch a man who is already lost.

And then it is only Thor and Odin. Thor climbs back up, limbs unsteady, and Odin opens his mouth to speak to him. Loki tears through the memory like paper. Cannot bear to stand there on the Bifrost and be regarded as Thor, as Odin’s true son.

Instead he goes back further. Thor’s hurts are bright and easy to follow. Loki has hurt him so very many times. There is the first moment he knew himself betrayed, back on that dusty town on Midgard, but even then there was an apology, buried in his heart; Loki can feel it there, beating, heavy as if it was in his own chest. Thor walks toward the Destroyer, walks towards his own death, and he believes it, without regret or malice. 

And in the moments before the Destroyer should have killed him, before his power was returned, he is thinking of Loki--wishing only that he knew what had happened to his brother, what had made this moment so. Believes the best of him, even with the evidence of Loki’s betrayal plain before him. As if Midgard had taught him nothing at all.

Loki slithers out of that memory and goes back further still, until Thor, just a boy, is holding a snake in his hands in the gardens. It’s beautiful, Thor is thinking, green and black and gleaming, and mixed up in it are the associations that the mind of a child makes: one of Frigga’s dresses, bright green and dazzling, the shine on the scales of Odin’s battle armor, which Thor covets so, the soft black of his brother’s hair, when it gets tangled after one of their adventures through the gardens, and Thor must help him comb it.

And then, as if called by Thor’s thoughts, the snake becomes his brother in truth, grinning, halfway already to laughter, and there is a sharp pain in Thor’s side. He stumbles back, crying out, and Loki falls on top of him, laughing and laughing.

Thor is angry; it is a dirty trick that his brother has played on him. But it was clever, too, and soon enough Thor is laughing as well, grabbing Loki by the hair and wrestling him to the ground. Loki, wheezing, becomes a snake again, much larger this time, and Thor wrestles with that too. He is bleeding still, all the while, but he is a boy. Small hurts are quickly forgotten.

Loki doesn’t remember this. He remembers being a snake, he remembers stabbing Thor, he remembers Frigga admonishing him later, seeing to Thor’s wound, but he does not remember playing with him. Does not remember Thor’s laughter. 

Loki stumbles away from the child that will someday be Thor, steps back and back away from the memory, the two children playing who know nothing.

When he looks up he can see Frigga, in a window above the courtyard, smiling down at her sons. And the pain in his breast at the sight is so sharp that it draws him right back to where he started, to the thing that hurt Thor the most. Back to what Thor wanted so badly for him to see, vain even in his mourning. Thor, bent over Loki’s body on Svartalfheim. There is dust in his teeth. Loki can taste it on his tongue. His thoughts are a muddle, rage and regret and pain so bright that Loki flinches back from it, scrambles outside of Thor once again to sit beside him instead.

But above all of those things is disbelief. Hope, dawning and bright and so quickly crushed, the sun snuffed out in an instant, as Thor realizes that Loki is, he believes, truly gone. That this is no trick. Not this time. This is his brother dead before him. It hurts more than Loki’s betrayal or his blade did.

And then Thor looks up at him, and it is _Thor_ , Thor the king, not the boy, and in his eyes, oh yes: that is definitely rage. It’s almost enough to make Loki regret it. Not quite.

“Not as fun a trip as you thought it would be?” Loki asks him, crouching now beside Thor, the puppet of himself prone at their feet.

Thor--the Thor who exists in flesh, and not only in shadow and memory--reaches out and grabs onto Loki’s wrist, not at all gently. And Loki blinks, back on the ship. Something sparks.

Thor is no sorcerer. Thor fights his battles with weapons forged of steel, not of magic, with his bones and his blood, but Loki has made a mistake. He let himself linger. And how Thor’s mind and his own are not separate, not entirely, and when Thor _yanks_ \--this time not with his flesh but with his self--Loki is alone, blessedly and horribly, and then he is not, again, Thor is with him, Thor is _inside his head_ \--

“Get out,” Loki snarls, but Thor is laughing inside him. There is no golden light, any longer; there is only darkness, a maze like the roots of Yggdrasil, twisting and changing. 

Thor does not reply. Of course Thor’s true self, the one that lives inside the mind, does not _speak_. Thor is all action, never contemplation. But Loki hears him anyway: Thor thinks that it is only fair, after Loki went where he pleased in his own mind. And underneath that he is angry, still, simmering with it. Angry that again and again Loki has fallen out of his reach, even within his memories.

Thor is just as nosy as Loki was. Loki can _feel_ it, intrusive like a knife to the gut. And so Loki does what he has always done: he runs. Given time Thor will find the most tender parts of him, just as Loki did. And so Loki runs, and Thor chases him, all, for a moment, as it should be.

Loki knows his own mind as well as one can, each twist and turn and dizzying dark path; but Thor has his own brute strength, and Loki can feel him stumbling through barrier after barrier. Loki darts back to Sakaar, and for a moment he is once again prone on the ground, disk stuck to his neck and Thor grinning above him. Loki is annoyed, still sore that Thor did not beg him to come with him, shocked and delighted that finally he has learned to deceive him. Thor, looking through his eyes, balks, flexes his own lightning, and then he is--Loki is--sitting up, rubbing at his neck. He tilts Loki’s head up, looking at his own face. Staring, Loki realizes, at the place where his eye no longer is, in the present. It hasn’t been so very long.

“Stop it,” Loki says, with his own mouth, and he yanks them away, yanks himself for just a moment out of Thor’s grip. 

Where to go? There is nowhere in Loki’s living memory that is without its barbs. But he remembers the snake, and without intention he is once again on Asgard. Older now, but still young. Sitting in one of the palace’s great libraries, pretending to ignore the story that Thor is telling him of a great battle in Asgard’s past.

They are both just boys. It is night, moonlight filtering in through the window where Thor sits, cross-legged and joyful. Loki still had poison in his heart, even in those days, but he had not yet learned to use it on Thor.

Thor is speaking of a great warrior hero; of course he is, Loki is thinking, sneaking looks at his book of spells out of the corner of his eye. That is the only sort of hero that Thor has any care for. A great hero, who led Asgard to a glorious victory against the Frost Giants, long long ago, long before the peace that their father brokered only centuries past. This great warrior was part of a battalion that was nearly wiped out, their supply lines broken. All seemed lost. But then, of course, the warrior rallied, and won the battle back themself, fueled by their fury at the death of their many comrades.

“That isn’t how it happened,” Loki says, finally incensed. If Thor insists on boring him with blood-soaked history, the least he could do is get it _right_. “No one warrior could have taken out that many Frost Giants. They must have had help.” Perhaps an ingenious sorcerer at their side, he thinks. 

“You weren’t even at this lesson!” Thor says.

“Obviously I didn’t miss much. That story is nothing but a fairytale. It’s only meant to inspire morale in soldiers.”

Thor scoffs. “Of course it is. It’s just a story, Loki. A good one! You’re always telling stories, aren’t you? What’s wrong with this one?”

What’s wrong with it is that, aside from being false, it’s _pointless_. Loki will tell tales until the day that his tongue falls rotten from his mouth, but he does not tell them idly. He tells stories so that Frigga will allow him to stay out in the city just a little longer, to get out of Odin’s lectures, to convince Thor that it was his idea all along to give Loki his nicest set of greaves.

Thor tells stories for no other reason than that he likes the sound of them, the pretty picture of them in his head. He shakes his head at Loki. “It’s not just about the valor of one hero. It’s about the power that our loved ones give us, even in death.”

“What would you know of death?” Loki asks. Trust Thor to find beauty in such ugliness, he thinks, both in the present and in the past, and then his thoughts unstick from themselves. 

Thor had no real reason to tell Loki this story, all these years ago. But perhaps there is a reason that he chooses to tell it now.

“I can’t believe you,” Loki says, in his young mouth. Thor, across from him in the library, looks up and grins. For a moment, his left eye flickers and is dark. “How did you get us here?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Thor says. “I am no sorcerer. But let us return to our earlier conversation.”

“The one we had hundreds of years ago?”

“And a few minutes ago,” Thor agrees. “Loki. You did see it, didn’t you? What I felt. What I feel now. What you--”

Loki is already up. He throws his book at Thor and turns and runs the other way, down Asgard’s hallways. But he’s made another mistake. One should never run from Thor when he has the upper hand already. No good ever comes of it. And somehow he has learned how to navigate Loki’s mind, how to search for what he needs, and already the corridors of Asgard are changing around him. The library is in the eastern section of the palace, but now Loki is to the south, and he has grown, and before him stands Odin, telling Loki that he has never been his son at all. 

Loki had already known. That moment on Jotunheim when he saw himself truly had told him all he needed. But the only thing he felt them was the numbness. The blow did not fully land until this moment, until he stood before the man who raised him and realized that his life, until now, had only ever been a pretty story. 

Thor’s presence only makes it worse, because he is nursing his own sort of pain at seeing their father, so recently dead, through Loki’s eyes. And the part of Loki that has always delighted in cruelty is glad: this is the only way, of course, that Thor will ever understand. Loki is cleaved in two by this truth, but he is also, finally, set free: there was never any chance of him being the perfect son. The empty core of him is only to be expected. And there is no reason that he should pretend to be different any longer. 

Odin falls. Loki does not run to him, as he did in truth. Instead he speaks to Thor, who feels ready to burst from the shadow of Loki’s skin. “So now you see,” he says. “A pity you weren’t here to gloat.”

It’s fitting, that the misery at the very center of him should cut Thor just as deeply.

Asgard melts away around them. Thor, ever contrary, so sure that the whole world will soon be bent to his will. “Leave it be,” Loki says sharply. But already Loki is standing again on Sakaar, bruised from his fall from the Bifrost. The scrappers didn’t find him immediately; Loki disguised himself too well for that. It would not do to be kidnapped five minutes into his stay on a new planet. 

He had waited near the place where he fell, observing all that he could. And--he could not hide it even from himself--he was waiting for Thor to arrive. By all rights he should be glad to be rid of his brother, glad to escape any punishment for his part in Odin’s fall. 

Loki sits down on what looks like an upended Midgardian refrigerator, and he stares up at the Sakaarian sky. Watches as the ships go by, as the wormholes deposit more and more junk. None of it is his brother. He waits for nearly a day. 

The sun is beginning to set when he decides that Thor is dead. 

It does not come upon him slowly, the surety. He realizes it all at once, a spear of ice in his chest, and he gasps with it, and Thor gasps with him. And now Thor will always know this feeling. He will surely never let Loki forget it.

No wonder Thor was angry, when Loki burrowed so deeply in his heart.

Loki does not stand. He does not shout, does not destroy his surroundings, as he did when he heard the news of Frigga’s death. Instead he lets the ice consume him, and for a moment is wholly and terribly still: does not think of what he will do, on this planet, does not think how he will evade Hela, does not plan anything at all. Instead he contemplates a world without Thor for long wasteful minutes.

He could run again. But what would be the point? There is nothing else for Thor to see. There is only this. The hurt that for a single quiet moment cut deeper even than Odin’s betrayal. 

Back on the ship, Thor lets go of Loki’s wrist, and everything dissolves at once. Again they are two instead of one. Loki’s mind is locked tight, the way that it should be. 

In the space of a blink, he is on Thor, his hand tight in what is left of Thor’s hair, pressing his head back against the wall. He has a dagger tight to Thor’s throat. Thor looks calm, as if his entire world has not just been upended, as if nothing at all noteworthy has just happened, as if his brother is not going to murder him where he sits, for daring to look into his soul and see clearly. It feels as though Loki has been filleted, a knife slipped cleanly between his ribs, separating his true heart from the rest of him. 

“How dare you,” he snarls. Only then does he realize that he is gasping.

Thor only raises an eyebrow. “I don’t see what you’re so upset about. You had no problem wandering about in _my_ head.”

It’s different, Loki thinks, and is almost startled when he realizes that Thor cannot hear him. “You wear your every thought on your sleeve,” he says. “What do you have to hide?”

Thor, so stupidly brave, raises a hand to Loki’s face. “What do you?” he asks, seriously. “I will not lie. You have much in your past to regret. As do I. But that is not what I saw.”

No. Thor saw only a sentimental fool. 

And then Thor has the audacity to crack a grin. “But tell me truly, brother,” he says. “How does it feel, for once in your life, to be forced into honesty?”

Loki presses the knife closer, just enough to draw blood. “I could kill you,” he says.

“No,” says Thor. “You couldn’t.” And now he knows, the bastard, that it is true. 

Loki drops the knife and digs his fingernails into Thor’s scalp. He leans in close, bites hard at Thor's lip, and does not know whether he wants the blood or the kiss more. Thor is infuriating. Loki is delighted, incandescent, to have Thor out of his head, but the hole he has left there is intolerable. There is nothing else for it, but to try his best to devour Thor whole. It is that or cut him to pieces.

Thor grunts at the sting. His hand at Loki’s cheek presses against the back of his head, fingers much more gentle than Loki’s. He kisses back just as gently, as well as he can manage against the sharpness of Loki’s tongue. 

Loki releases his mouth, but not his hair. He thought that he might feel better. But it still feels as though his ribs have been bent back, his guts spilled out for Thor’s inspection. 

“Well?” he demands. “Is it all that your dreamed of? My _honesty_?”

“As ever,” Thor says, still fucking _grinning_ , his thumb rubbing against Loki’s cheekbone, “it is not nearly as bad as you think it is.”

“I hate you,” Loki says, and kisses him again, again. “If you ever go muddling about in my head again, I know so many ways to make life very unpleasant for you.”

“Now that, I believe.” Thor tips his head back against the wall. Curls his hand into Loki’s hair and pulls him forward, until his face is pressed in the space between Thor’s shoulder and his neck. “That was enough truth for a lifetime, Loki. Now for once, may we be at peace?”

“There is no peace in my heart, Thor,” Loki tells him. Presses his hand against Thor’s chest, and feels the steadiness of his own heart. 

“There is,” Thor says. He’s carding his fingers through Loki’s hair. The way Loki had forgotten he used to comb it. “We went there. You let me tell you a story.”

“Alright,” he says, suddenly weary. “Tell me a better one, this time.” Loki closes his eyes. He listens to Thor talk. Wonders if his next betrayal will hurt all the more, now that Thor has seen the inside of his head.

All this, because Thor needed to be sure that Loki knew he loved him. Loki really does hate him, sometimes. And of course, now Thor knows that too. 

“I can hear you thinking,” Thor says, interrupting himself. Another tale of a great warrior, the only sort that Thor seems to know.

“No you can’t,” Loki snaps. And catches himself, traitorously, thinking that it might be easier if he always could. He sighs. Slaps Thor once on the chest and then untangles himself from him, in body at least, if not in mind. He stands. “Well, I will say one thing for you: your mind is a far sight more pleasant than the Valkyrie’s.”

“You really should apologize to her, you know,” Thor says, peering up at him. “For the sake of your working relationship, if nothing else.”

“I find my relationships work better when all parties involved are kept on their toes.”

Thor laughs. He is, Loki thinks despairingly, very beautiful, eye or no eye. He stands as well. “So, you will admit that I was right?”

“Yes, Thor,” Loki says. “You were right. You have fixed all our ills. What will the valiant hero Thor Odinson accomplish next?”

“A pretty story,” Thor agrees. “Perhaps soon enough you will learn to tell it better.”

Loki reaches for the bottle stopper he left on the ground what feels like hours earlier, the closest thing within reach, and throws it at Thor’s head. Thor catches it. He tosses it in his hand, as if weighing it, before he tosses it behind himself. And then he pulls Loki, unprepared, into a bone-crushing hug.

“Oaf,” Loki says. But he does not stand stiff in Thor’s arms, as he did when Thor hugged him on their first night on this ship, weeks ago now. He hugs Thor back. There simply doesn’t seem to be anything to gain by not. He presses close. Feels Thor’s heartbeat and his own, just slightly out of sync. And the stillness of his mind, this time, is not quite so terrible: it is still a yawning and terrible and frightening thing. But there is peace in it, too. The knowledge that Thor will chase him anywhere. And if he knows that, then perhaps he does not always have to run.


End file.
